Out in stores now: Catch My Drift, the debut novel book by Genevieve Scott!
Don't miss out on the novel The Toronto Star compares to the works of Alice Munro, Barbara Gowdy, and Mona Awad, calling Catch My Drift "an affecting novel-in-stories whose cleverness and comic moments intersect evocatively with moments of loss and regret."
Order your copy from Goose Lane Editions, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, or your local independent bookstore.
ABOUT THE NOVEL
Lorna always wanted to stand out, but her career as a competitive swimmer was cut short by a knee injury. Cara, her daughter, tries hard to blend in, but when she has to fill in for her brother at a school pageant, she is overwhelmed by terror. Lorna is vain about her ability to shut out distractions. Cara can’t control her scary thoughts. And while Lorna tries her best to move past life’s early disappointments, Cara picks at the cracks in her family’s story. Spanning two decades, Catch My Driftfollows mother and daughter through life changes big and small, and reveals that despite our shared experiences, we each live a private story.
EXCERPT
Summer, 1975
Lorna stepped to the edge of the pool and stared down at her toes. Though the evening air was thick and warm, her nail beds were purple. Somewhere through the pool fence, she could hear the bell of an ice cream truck.
The pool was closed for the evening, but Debbie, Lorna’s roommate, was the lifeguard in charge of Wednesday lock-up. She and Lorna had planned this session back at the beginning of August.
“Just say when,” Debbie said. The stopwatch swung casually from her narrow wrist.
Nerves contracted in Lorna’s stomach, bunching into the shape of an apple. She looked up and ahead. Across the park, men and women strolled in pairs or stretched out together on the dark green grass. Focus, Lorna told herself. Fukiss. She shook out her hands and wiped them across her nylon-plastered ribs. “Yeah,” she said. “Ready.”
Debbie whistled; Lorna leapt. She felt the tidiness of her dive, the satisfying surge of water against her forehead. She tore across the twenty-five-metre pool, legs pumping, sucking air deep into the branches of her lungs. At the wall, she turned with a hard kick and began to visualize her next target: the delicate, tanned knobs of Debbie’s knees. As she reached Debbie’s end and turned again, Lorna’s mind jumped to her own lumpy knees, now motoring her through the water. Focus, her brain shrieked. But the thing was, they really were potato knees: thick, draggy things laced right up the middle like footballs. Focus, focus, fukiss.
At the end of the four laps, Lorna slammed her hand on the deck, splashing Debbie’s shorts. Her breath was scorching, ragged. She tried her best to look unruffled.
Debbie nodded as she stared down at her watch. “You’re getting there,” she said. “That’s for sure, definitely.”
Lorna couldn’t bear to look at Debbie’s crinkled, earnest face. She looked instead at the concrete deck, the grey puddles becoming shiny in the dropping sun.
“You slowed down in the middle there. Just a little, huh?” Debbie said.
“Time?"
“One minute eleven.”
Lorna slapped her bathing cap on the deck and ducked below the surface. Water tingled across her scalp. Debbie was training to be a teacher. When Lorna came back up, she’d say, “Chin up, you!” She’d say, “Don’t sweat it. You’re getting better every day!” She’d suggest doing something “fun” to take Lorna’s mind off things. Lorna needed her mind on this and this alone: varsity tryouts were two weeks away. She kicked off the tile and swam underwater to the other side of the pool.
